1. Technical Field
The disclosure relates in general to a dimming control apparatus and a method thereof, and more particularly to a dimming control apparatus applicable to light emitting diode lamp modules and a method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
While energy saving issues are widely concerned around the world, one of the important parts is to find alternatives replacing the conventional illumination. Light emitting diode (LED) related technologies are now a focus of research and development since LEDs, as the alternative, have the advantages of energy efficiency and low power consumption. However, the development and popularity of LED technologies encounter bottlenecks and they should be broken through with respect to different aspects, rather than the design aspect only. One aspect is to satisfy the demands for dimming control and ambient lighting. The LED related technologies become significant technologies since the consumers realize that the LED not only provides the illumination but also contributes to power saving. To fulfill the needs for the consumers for practical applications, the design of dimming control and ambient lighting becomes crucial to the market of LED fixtures. Another aspect is to reduce the cost of LED fixtures. The dimmable LED fixture is composed of a dimming unit and an LED fixture. For indoor lighting applications that require dimming function to control each unit, the cost will be increased inevitably.
In order to meet the needs for digital dimming, the cost of the LED lighting system could be increased in view of limitation of the general lighting control system. The disadvantage of the general lighting control system, such as digital addressable lighting interface (DALI) or digital multiplex interface (DMX), is that the number of addressable units is limited. For example, the DALI lighting system can control up to 64 addressable units only. The modularized LED fixture design becomes a popular design and a modularized LED fixture is composed by a digital dimming system and several LED modules. For providing dimming control for individual LED module, an LED lighting system including a number of LED fixtures must employ a considerable number of digital dimming systems, resulting in a higher cost for deployment. Such a high cost would affect the popularity of the LED lighting system with individual dimming control. Therefore, it is desirable to reduce the cost so as to facilitate the wider use of the LED lighting systems.